Tavern on the Meta

Moshe

12:39 AM

@jcole is so always that popular?

jcolebrand

3:03 AM

@Moshe Your grammar was kind of broken

Fosco

4:03 AM

@Moshe obvious answer: no. ;)

Moshe

4:16 AM

@Fosco Ok, what changed? Was it the Steve Jobs quote and search engines?

Rebecca Chernoff

we've been dropping in that ranking for months

Moshe

@RebeccaChernoff Again, what changed?

Rebecca Chernoff

what do you mean?

Moshe

Cole said that SO was one of the top 200 most visited sited today. You say that you've been dropping in a certain ranking for months. What changed today?

Rebecca Chernoff

nothing?

Moshe

4:22 AM

@RebeccaChernoff Why the sudden spike in traffic?

Rebecca Chernoff

what sudden spike in traffic?

Moshe

7 hours ago, by jcolebrand

well, considering StackOverflow for itself is one of the top 200 most visited sites on the internet today, idk

@RebeccaChernoff Unless I'm missing something, the last twenty or so messages indicate that StackOverflow was in the top 200 most visited websites today, but is not usually in the top 200.

Rebecca Chernoff

Last November we were ranked #400, december we went to #369. In February we dropped under #300. In March #284. In August #250ish. Today Quantcast has us ranked #202.

quantcast.com/p-c1rF4kxgLUzNc

Moshe

@RebeccaChernoff Got it, thanks.

Cool report.

Rebecca Chernoff

so...no clue what you're talking about with anything sudden.

we're growing. we've been growing.

Tim Stone

4:31 AM

Magic!

Sankar Ganesh

6:36 AM

@TimStone: and @GeorgeMarian: and @Shog9: any guys here

@All: Bye

balpha

9:00 AM

": and ".join("@" + name for name in people) + ": good morning"

2

Pekka

9:37 AM

Morning @balpha!

@Mootinator re this question

48

Q: Does SO need social networking features to improve the experience for expert users?

No, not like this: Hear me out! As Stack Overflow grows, it becomes increasingly ridden with newbie questions. It's just natural. The team are fighting hard to keep the crap out, but there are many very basic questions that are okay on their own. They don't deserve to be kicked out* - they ar...

I remember you adding a comment about a userscript.

Seeing as Jeff categorically declines the idea, I'm wondering how feasible that would be doing as a 3rd party service?

Just hypothetically. Maybe recording the upvoting behaviour of a followed user instead of having an "interesting" button.

It would involve heavy server-side stuff though as far as I can see, and doing that in a scalable way would be a lot of work

I, for one, am growing tired of finding the gems among the heaps of not-bad-but-mediocre stuff so I would really like to see something like this.

balpha

10:16 AM

"Your end users don't spend their time comparing websites in 5 browsers and bitching about tiny inconsistencies" #fronteers11

Tweeted by seutje on October 7, 2011 at 9:40 AM

Ours do that very well ;p

Reno

so true ;)

Pekka

10:33 AM

I agree that some feature requests on Meta are of the eye-rolling variety, but overall I'm not sure that's fair.

balpha

I wasn't meaning to criticize -- it's awesome that our users do that

tombull89

10:52 AM

Granted, the one about text ending up behind the starred chat wall was SF.Chat messing about.

Pekka

@balpha ah, fair enough. My eye got caught by the "bitching" and I took your comment that way

Not that there isn't a fair amount of bitching of course. :)

balpha

I'll take a bit of bitching, if that means having a huge community of thorough testers

Pekka

@balpha yeah, that really is an amazing phenomenon. Introduce something new, and after 6 hours, most bugs and esoteric side-effects will have been pointed out on Meta.

I don't think there is any other site that has that.

balpha

balpha.de/2011/06/a-shout-out-to-the-people-of-meta

Pekka

@balpha nice!

And it works. There are three-billion-dollar enterprises where it doesn't

For example, I can't change my contact details in my Facebook profile. I've tried various browsers and machines. It's been that way for 3 weeks now

balpha

11:03 AM

you should ask on Stack Overflow, I hear it's the facebook support site now

Pekka

@balpha ooooh, great idea! I was just about to say that there is no place to file bugs. But there is, of course!

Or even better, Meta. Just to throw in more bizarreness

I think Facebook would do well in identifying competent developers among its users (Stack Overflow users with a certain rep for example?), and allow them to file bugs. Seriously.

I can understand that you don't want bug reports from half a billion people, but you want them from those who know how to file bugs

Reno

Even Google should do something like this.

Pekka

Correction: The Facebook bug I mentioned has been fixed now. I just tested it and it worked. Still, three weeks is way too long

@Reno yeah.

"You have 10 seconds left for editing" - nice feature @balpha

balpha

I hoped it would be helpful -- I never need that (so I never see it either)

Pekka

It is immensely helpful.

I tend to fix grammar and even find more elegant sentences to express something better. I hope that is not too annoying for everyone else

balpha

11:21 AM

missing a period at the end of that sentence

Pekka

No, missing periods in chat are a Stilmittel

Although I can't quite define what it does.

It's a subtle change the tonality of the sentence.

balpha

I absolutely understand, that?

Pekka

Heh.

Stern magazine works with missing periods a lot when captioning photographs.

I think they think it makes the captions sound more sophisticated.

Needless to say they are dead wrong.

balpha

Stern, wrong? never!

Pekka

When they are wrong, they tend to be wrong with a vengeance

It is almost 30 years since they fell for the fake Hitler diaries and it's still not forgotten.

But they have nice cartoons and photos. Stern is my #1 reading choice whenever I'm getting my hair cut.

And my Dad tells me they have a nice crossword. He has a subscription only because of the crossword.

balpha

11:28 AM

Like some people subscribe to Playboy for the articles?

Pekka

Maybe! :) But no, I think he's serious. He can't stand the magazine but he loves the crossword.

tombull89

12:18 PM

GIVE ME TEH CODEZ!

-2

Q: i want codeing for this program,do in C++,C,C#,Java

Given a list of words, L, that are all the same length, and a string, S, find the starting position of the substring of S that is a concatenation of each word in L exactly once and without any intervening characters. This substring will occur exactly once in S. Example: L: "fooo", "barr", "wing"...

discussion

Sathya

-3

Q: Amount in Word in MS SQL

Can me suggest how can convert amount in word in MS SQL, Pls send me reply by ASAP. Thanks in advance!

bug asking-questions

Tim Stone

2:27 PM

@balpha It's OK to criticize, five browsers usually means that they're Opera users (OK, so I have Opera installed too...)

balpha

me too, but I count six when you include opera: Chrome, IE, FF, Safari, and whatever your phone uses

Tim Stone

Ah, right. Mobile devices are a whole other playing field. :P

abatishchev

maybe make splash to be a synonym for splash-screen ?

"splash" itself makes no sense imo

Tim Stone

@balpha Oh, if you're poking PageDown, meta.stackoverflow.com/q/108092

Pekka

What do you guys think of this?

6

A: Protect newbie questions from abuse and SO from spam

While I don't agree with your premise that high-rep users ignore low-rep users, I think the basic idea of having a "sandbox" that all questions have to go through first is intriguing. How about every new question goes into sandbox mode first. Questions in the sandbox Can be upvoted and downvo...

@PaddedCell makes some good counterpoints but I think this is really something worth thinking about.

Tim Stone

2:46 PM

Hmm

Doesn't that potentially provide a pretty significant barrier to getting answers, though?

balpha

@TimStone oh nice; I missed that when I was on vacation. Thanks

also, -1 for not providing a patch ;p

Tim Stone

I was going to, but I only got word you were on vacation after the fact, and figured a one-variable fix wasn't quite worth cloning on Google Code for ;)

Next time though, next time. :P

Pekka

@TimStone it does, but that is part of the basic idea.

It would be a pretty deep change, no doubt

Tim Stone

Now that (on SO) users are required to register before asking questions, it seems like adding this additional obstacle might put off the people who are most likely to ask reasonable questions.

Pekka

@TimStone I'm not sure - after all, SO is the world's No.1 place to get an answer for your question. And the obstacle is not that big - there's nothing you have to do. You just need favourable vote on your reasonable question and you're good to go.

Tim Stone

2:53 PM

Well sure, but voting (on questions in particular) has been a bit of a problem in the past.

Pekka

But look at it this way - almost everyone who can provide an answer at the moment can unlock the question from the sandbox by providing their vote. So the net obstacle for a good question is pretty much zero.

Once it is established that a question you want to answer can't be answered before you have voted on it, the number of votes is going to multiply.

The obstacle becomes much bigger for bad questions but that is the intention.

Tim Stone

Perhaps attacking it from a different angle, what does this solve that isn't already taken care of in some form?

Pekka

@TimStone the fact that at the moment, bad questions get answers because people want to gain rep.

As said in the suggestion, that is a strength of this community. It is generous to those who ask an imperfect question.

Tim Stone

Yeah, and those people have poor priorities. The truly bad questions typically also at least get closed though.

Pekka

But when the number of imperfect questions becomes too big, you need to do something about this.

@TimStone yeah. Under the sandbox system, if you ask a bad question, no feedback is going to be forthcoming. No better way to make people think about how to improve the question

I'm not 100% sure about this. It could be a bad idea for the community. But it's one of the most interesting ideas I've seen over the past few months.

Tim Stone

2:58 PM

@Pekka So, do you really believe that they'll think about it at all? :P

Fixing people bugs with software is always a challenge because you can't reach through the screen and slap them.

Fosco

@Pekka You got a +1 from me for an interesting solution to the OPs alleged problem.

Pekka

@Fosco thanks!

jcolebrand

Who do we know that's in Dayton OH?

Pekka

@TimStone Many may not, but their questions remain in the sandbox... Which could be emptied frequently

@jcolebrand not sure... Why, for what?

jcolebrand

mostly shinkicking

afk, meeting

Pekka

3:01 PM

@jcolebrand why, what did they do?

@jcolebrand later!

Tim Stone

@jcolebrand I'll reach out to my network of associates.

@Pekka Right, and so the problem there is that if many completely miss the point, then the effectiveness of the system is relatively low, which makes it hard to consider actually implementing it. I certainly see where you were aiming, I just don't know if, in practice, that would actually hit the mark so to speak.

If only we had an AI that could run the question quality filter, our problems would be solved. :P

Moshe

3:31 PM

@TimStone "Siri, is this question the product of trolling?"

3

"Why, yes it is. Should I delete it for you?"

"Yes, please."

"Done. Would you like me to organize some unicorns too?"

"Uh, yea, that would be awesome."

"Here is a list of all Unicorn caves in San Francisco."

3

Q: From Slashdot: Does being a loyal developer pay?

I saw this question posted on Slashdot and thought it would make a great question here on Programmers.SE. It's not my question, nor my situation. Here goes: "As a senior developer for a small IT company based in the UK that is about to release their flagship project, I know that if I were ...

work-environment ethics employment

jcolebrand

3:54 PM

@Pekka someone stole an iPhone from my friend, but technically it's my iPhone

Moshe

@jcolebrand Ruh Roh, just got this notice from my school's security office:

This office has become aware of an alarming increase in incidents involving the "snatching" of cell phones and ipods on or near public transportation facilities. A number of these thefts have been reported to us by members of the Brooklyn College Community.
Persons while travelling to and from the campus should, if at all possible,avoid talking on cell phones and avoid wearing ear buds since it appears perpetrators target those individuals.
Be aware of your surroundings at all times and keep electronic devices out of sight.

jcolebrand

well duh. It happens a lot.

My buddy was an idiot tho, so all I need is shinkicking

Moshe

Hey! "Siri, [...]" and "Magic!" are both starred. A coincidence? I think not!

mootinator

4:19 PM

@Pekka I was just adding a Google+ +1 button to an arbitrary SE post. I didn't put a lot of thought into how do do what you were suggesting via a userscript.

"...trolling?" and "Magic!" are both starred too!

Moshe

@moot Heh.

mootinator

I just sent a strongly worded e-mail to my optometrist.

Tim Stone

For some reason that amuses me

Popular Demand

@TimStone Is it because the e-mail wouldn't have needed <strong> if the optometrist had done his job right?

Tim Stone

claps

Rebecca Chernoff

4:30 PM

|:

mootinator

It's isn't cool when $500 pairs of sunglasses fall apart and you go to the frame manufacturer's site and happen across 20/22 reviews saying "don't buy these they fall apart"

Tim Stone

Wow, that sucks. :/

mootinator

4:58 PM

That's just the month I'm having. All these stupid little $600 problems popping up.

Fosco

5:23 PM

Who buys $500 sunglasses?

jcolebrand

I do >.>

mootinator

Me.

They're usually not crap.

Also, prescription lenses.

Fosco

Most I've ever spent was around $125, many years ago for some Hilfiger shades... Didn't take long before I sat on them and ruined them completely.

mootinator

I normally expect to get at least 4 years out of a pair.

I can't really drive without them though. We have as much sky as physically possible here, and I have stupid floaters which are very annoying against that backdrop.

Fosco

Floaters suck =\ I only usually see mine in the winter, in the reflection off the snow. I'm quite light sensitive, but never got prescription sunglasses.

jcolebrand

5:35 PM

@mootinator We have tried to limit the amount of sky available in Shreveport. I generally encourage there to only be ~180 degrees of sky in any given orientation.

mootinator

@jcolebrand O_o

What we need is a bylaw against not building tall buildings in the middle of nowhere.

(I'm just happy my commute is North/South)

I did East in the morning West in the evening once for a few months. Not a big fan of that.

Moshe

6:23 PM

Gotta love dropbox, let's me see the graphic designer working in real time!

jcolebrand

6:34 PM

too many downvotes on meta, @Moshe, earns you a block

you can then no longer post Q on meta

Moshe

@jcolebrand Uuh, what's the threshold? It was a serious question, although I can see people not liking it.

jcolebrand

if I told you it wouldn't be a very good threshold would it?

Moshe

Well, I'm not trying to game the system and I think you can believe me when I say that.

jcolebrand

I know that

I still won't disclose limits that I don't think are public :p

PS: comment cleanups ;)

Moshe

@jcolebrand Ok, understood.

@jcolebrand Will do, thank you. ^_^

I guess my feature requests can't be taken to seriously. I'm the guy who keeps leaving baby cartoons in all of the study rooms. Hehe.

sigh becoming more active socially (online and off) is turning me into a troll.

Fosco

6:50 PM

It'd be so much better if I understood any of it.

Moshe

@Fosco Understood what?

Fosco

Every whiteboard drawing you've posted.

Moshe

Oh, now I'm feeling stupid for being insensitive. I can explain the captions if you like. They're all one liners.

Fosco

You can explain this one if you like... the others, it's too late.

Moshe

@Fosco This just says "Me" on the whiteboard.

Ich = I/Me

It's called "Ich und mein iPhone", or "me and my iPhone".

Fosco

6:54 PM

Are you learning German?

jcolebrand

Ich is the singular self pronoun

I went to the store

well, I forget my german to translate that one

but JFK said "Ich bin ein Berliner"

Moshe

I'm doing so in a very slow lazy way where I make things up as I go along, but I do have some workbooks.

@jcolebrand "I'm a donut."

3

jcolebrand

I am a Berlin-er (I am one of you)

balpha

I'm the only Berliner here!

jcolebrand

@Moshe specifically it was a reference to a specific kind of jelly donut, much like a bavarian filled one here, but whatever, the intent was what was important, and the people understood that

Suddenly: A wild @balpha appears!

Moshe

6:56 PM

haha

Fosco

You have died of dysentery.

Moshe

Ok, I have things to take care of. Yom Kippur begins tonight at sundown. Have a good one folks. See you next week.

Fosco

enjoy that, whatever that is.

jcolebrand

It's a Jewish Holiday

Moshe

Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur (, ), Also known as Day of Atonement, is the holiest and most solemn day of the year for the Jews. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services. Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora'im ("Days of Awe"). Yom Kippur is the Tishrei. According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person's fate for the coming year into a book, the Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah, and waits...

jcolebrand

6:57 PM

The Jews are very big on not using technology, at times.

Moshe

Tschüß!

Fosco

I know this.

jcolebrand

I have never quite understood their fascination

I love that there's a Football pic on that :p

balpha

almost as good as

Engineer

An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical and practical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, safety and cost. Engineers are grounded in applied sciences, and their work in research and development is distinct from the basic research focus of scientists. The work of engineers forms the link between scientific discoveries and their subsequent applications to human needs. R...

Fosco

=\

jcolebrand

7:02 PM

1

A: Sorting answers by views should tell you the views

Answers don't have views; only questions have views.

What do we have to do to get rid of that?

Michael Mrozek

Er. What?

Get a developer to remove it?

Fosco

Remove what? I like the sort option, and don't care that it lacks the view count.

It's a table of answers & vote tallies, which you can sort by other things... not sure why the OP expects the data to change because the sort changes.

Michael Mrozek

@Fosco Well Jeff claimed that "answers don't have views", so offering to sort answers by views is a bit odd

Fosco

7:18 PM

/shrug... you're sorting your answers by the views of the question.

Michael Mrozek

Then why not show the number of question views?

Fosco

My guess is that the amount of people who would care to see that is infinitesimally small enough, that it does not warrant pulling and displaying that information for everyone else.

Shog9

@MichaelMrozek You realize the rendering of each answer-line doesn't change with the sort order, right? There's no "last modified time" displayed for "recent" or "created" for "newest".

Michael Mrozek

@Shog9 It doesn't change for questions either, yet somehow we still manage

Shog9

@MichaelMrozek Question rendering already displays both view-count and last-modified time.

But you are correct - we do still manage. No one is out there saying we need to get a dev to remove the "Newest" sort order since creation date isn't displayed next to the question.

Michael Mrozek

7:26 PM

@Shog9 My point is Jeff said "answers don't have views" as though that settled the matter -- clearly answers have something that is being used to sort them, that the UI has decided to call "views", and the OP wants that number shown somewhere. According to Fosco it's the question's views -- it doesn't really matter what though

Shog9

@MichaelMrozek So you're saying Jeff can't possibly be wrong, and therefore we must remove the feature because obviously it is operating entirely on black magic?

It can be a dumb feature-request and still get a dumb answer from Jeff, y'know.

They're not mutually exclusive.

Michael Mrozek

@Shog9 Seriously? I'm saying that some number is being used to sort those, and there's nothing stopping us from showing that number other than intentional obtuseness

If the reason not to show it is "it's a waste of space", then fine. If the reason is "that number doesn't exist", then I look forward to hearing how that sort can exist

Shog9

@MichaelMrozek Really? That's the only reason you can come up with not to tack another number onto the each answer-line?

Fosco

intentional obtuseness? ... i'd say there's no reason to display it other than intentional obtuseness.

Michael Mrozek

This is not an argument about whether or not the number should be there, I couldn't care less. It's an argument about whether or not Jeff's answer made sense

Shog9

7:32 PM

@MichaelMrozek Then what's with the whole, "How can we get the sort order removed" / "Ask a dev" thing?

Michael Mrozek

@Shog9 ...that would be how you'd get it removed

Shog9

@MichaelMrozek But you wouldn't, because you've no justification for removing it.

Michael Mrozek

I wouldn't remove it, no

Shog9

We're locked in bitter agreement.

3

Fosco

lol

Michael Mrozek

7:35 PM

I get frustrated with these arguments, because they happen with devs on a daily basis. The number of times I find myself explaining basic SO concepts to the people that implemented them because they've suddenly decided to pretend they don't understand if it makes their position easier to defend is ridiculous

Shog9

Life is so hard

Michael Mrozek

...right

Fosco

I think you over-estimate your skills at explanation.

Shog9

7:50 PM

Here:

0

A: Sorting answers by views should tell you the views

I disagree. For 2.5 reasons... First and foremost, it'd be confusing. Right now, the number to the right means votes. It always means votes. You don't need to remember what your sort order is set to, you just glance to the right and there it is - the vote-count. You could mitigate that by adop...

So, @jco - how did this come up? The feature request is a year and a half old, with five votes - does anyone really care?

Fosco

oh god... i didn't realize it was from May 2010!

mootinator

8:31 PM

You folks are chatty when I take a 2 hour lunch.

Tim Stone

8:50 PM

@mootinator I was silently waiting for you to bring me something back.

mootinator

@TimStone You can have this heartburn I brought back with me.

jcolebrand

@Shog9 did it get bumped? I thought I only asked a comment on an A. I didn't think that bumped.

I only want to know why the view filter exists for answers, when there is no such thing.

@MichaelMrozek fwiw this was my reason not to show it.

Shog9

@jcolebrand It got bumped now...

jcolebrand

@Shog9 but I didn't cause that part

I only brought it up as a form of discussion .. in the chatroom .. to see who was with me

I may not have clearly stated that was my goal

but when have I ever been clear on the first pass?

> If the reason not to show it is "it's a waste of space", then fine.

It obviously doesn't affect anything the way that it's displayed, ergo ...

Shog9

I'm just curious as to why you're thinking about this now. Were you staring at your profile earlier, answers neatly sorted by views, thinking, "No, no no - this is all wrong!"

jcolebrand

9:02 PM

There's a user by the name of "Click Upvote" or somesuch on Stack Overflow with 500+ Q and of those 500+ 20 are 10k+ views and 111 are 2k+ views (math by tens is easy)

So I was like "zow, that's a lot of high-view Qs. Oh look, sort A by view. Let's see that."

Then when it didn't apparently sort by views (as evidenced by no view number being in sight) I mumbled something about it to someone. The next I knew I was staring at that A from Atwood.

So then I snipped it into the chatroom and went on about my business. (notably lunch, which also explains why I was absent from the convo here about it when I could've cooled heads sooner)

So if you really want to blame someone, blame TheNonpresentException for having issues with PHP, which really sounds like "blame PHP"

Which I think we can all admit is generally the case.

Tim Stone

Hahahah

Shog9

I'm blaming Click Upvote. I always blame Click Upvote.

jcolebrand

lol, that would likely be the case

Sep 26 at 15:17, by jcolebrand

I always blame Monday. Especially on Thursday.

20x49.shreveport-bossier.org/index.php/2011/10/06/…

Tim Stone

9:47 PM

In what is surely the mother of all bugs, all.css references ?v=3 and ?v=4 of sprites.png, causing an extra unnecessary request! :O

jcolebrand

I can very patently see that this is obviously the mother of all bugs

The source from which other lesser bugs are created

the very giver of the essence of bug life itself :p

Tim Stone

I spun the wheel and it told me it was Jeff's fault, which only furthers my point.

jcolebrand

That's funny, I thought the wheel never lied

@YiJiangs why am I not on the wheel :P

mootinator

I'm too interesting to be on the wheel.

Rebecca Chernoff

10:05 PM

You can have my spot.

balpha

That's like Obama subletting the White House

Rebecca Chernoff

Shush you ):

Tim Stone

chuckles

Hmm :o

Rebecca Chernoff

10:22 PM

Hehe

Tim Stone

Anything that looks particularly objectionable?

Rebecca Chernoff

Oh, did you see the sede mso q Sam asked last night?

Tim Stone

Yep

Rebecca Chernoff

On iPhone now, I'll take a closer look later.

Tim Stone

Cool, thanks!

Rebecca Chernoff

10:26 PM

How would you tie revisions in?

Tim Stone

This is pre-model-revision

Rebecca Chernoff

Or rather, the history

Ah (:

Tim Stone

There's a few features I added in the updates, so (in addition to having started it before realizing the need for model changes) I wanted to try and roll those out first while the model updates were being worked out/worked on.

Rebecca Chernoff

Gotcha

Tim Stone

10:52 PM

Ah, which reminds me, there was a SlickGrid Opera bug that needed fixing while I'm in there.

Transcript for